Inquiry into increasing dugong death expanded

Another dugong was found dead in Krabi on Sunday as the Natural Resources and Environment Minister Chalermchai Sri-on directed relevant authorities to expedite urgent measures concerning the alarming increase in the dugong death rate.
According to Love the Krabi Sea Association president Ali Channam, the carcass of a female dugong was washed ashore on Si Boya Island on Sunday.
Initial findings revealed that the animal was one metre long and had no fangs, implying that it had not yet reached maturity despite bite marks on the body believed to be by other dugongs.
The carcass was sent to the Lower Andaman Sea Marine and Coastal Resources Research Centre in Trang for further autopsy.
Mr Ali said this was the second dead dugong found on the Krabi coast within a month. The first one was an adult female found dead in the Khao Thong subdistrict area on Nov 8, just nine days earlier.
According to a source, at least 35 dugongs have died in the Andaman Sea this year.
Minister Chalermchai Sri-on on Monday expressed concern about the crisis, saying the critical decline of seagrass, the main food source for dugongs, was a prime factor that led to the animal’s rising death rate, particularly in Trang province, once the largest and most diverse area for seagrass and home to a significant dugong population.
Mr Chalermchai said the province’s main seagrass sites, in Hat Chao Mai National Park and Moo Koh Libong Marine Park Reserve, are critically depleted, with the natural habitat only about half as abundant as in previous years.
Mr Chalermchai said that the ministry had earlier ordered the Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation and the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources to come up with crisis recovery and dugong protection measures.
Seagrass bed restoration, supplement feeding and dugong recovery ponds have thus been set up, along with training courses on basic dugong rescue techniques.
The minister urged both agencies to urgently expedite the implementation of the measures for solid results to prevent more deaths in the remaining dugong population.
He said he would keep track of this crisis by himself after he returns from his Nov 19-20 participation in the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan.
Marine expert Thon Thamrongnawasawat meanwhile posted on Facebook urging Mr Chalermchai to raise the dugong crisis on the COP29 panel.
According to him, a total of 72 dugongs have died over the past two years due to depleted seagrass sources along Thailand’s coasts especially in Trang, Krabi, and Satun.
The fatality rate of the dugong in the country has jumped from one per month seven years ago to 3.75 per month this year.
With such an alarming rate, Mr Thon said the dugong in the Andaman Sea is expected to disappear completely in the next 4-5 years.